


Bite Your Tongue

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Car Accidents, Humanstuck, M/M, Sadstuck, deceiving backstories, erikar - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-29 01:52:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’re alone and you can have peace right now because he’s not here to start another argument over something that doesn’t matter. Sometimes you think he’s a bit over-dramatic, and you know it’s just because of the way he was raised, but it gets to be too much sometimes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bite Your Tongue

**Author's Note:**

> This is an adaptation of can-you-hear-the-honks-nepeta's thing I found on tumblr, but I changed it from erisol to erikar. I'll put the link to the original post here later since tumblr is being cruel and won't load my likes atm.

Your name is Karkat Vantas and you’re in a fight with your boyfriend.

You can see the tears forming in his eyes, rapidly building and threatening to spill over. You hate to see him like this, saying you didn’t would be an outright lie, but you really need some time for yourself. This was one argument he would have to lose. You’re about to change your mind, seeing him is such a broken state like this, because you can tell he thought he couldn’t be hurt like this again, but right as you open your mouth to speak he walks out the door, and you can see the small drop of liquid fall from his cheek as he turns. He slams the door exceptionally hard, making you cringe as the metal locks slam together and the wood of the door frame collides with your heavy front door. You suppose that’s what you wanted in the first place, but you feel like that was the worst way it could have happened. But you don’t care. You’re alone and you can have peace right now because he’s not here to start another argument over something that doesn’t matter. Sometimes you think he’s a bit over-dramatic, and you know it’s just because of the way he was raised, but it gets to be too much sometimes.

You decide to go take a nap and watch a movie from your couch, an old favorite from your collection of romcoms, Fifty First Dates. You’ve always found appeal in the movie, and you’re not exactly sure why. Either way, you sit on the couch with the soft blanket you keep hanging over the back, wrapping it around your already-too-hot body, and you watch about twenty minutes of your film before dosing on the couch. It’s not really a long nap, just a refresher. 

When you wake up, the movie is on that part when the police officer is writing a ticket for her license plates being expired, and you decide you don’t want to watch the movie any more. You’re too tired anyway. But not too tired to eat before you go off to bed.

The kitchen lights are still on from when you and Eridan were throwing harsh words at each other (but really you were the one throwing the harsh words), and it hurts your eyes, which were adjusted to the dark living room, which was lit by only the light of your movie before you decided to shut it off. You turn one of the main lights off so that you don’t have to squint as much to see everything, and you walk to your pantry to grab a box of crackers and some juice before walking to the table. You don’t eat much though, you’ve got too much on your mind. The incident rains heavy on your thoughts, and you wonder if maybe you didn’t have to be so hard on him. You know he’s faced massive let-downs in the past, especially with your high school friend, Feferi. He’d always had a thing for her, but he drove her too far. He was suicidal, often outraged and emotionally distant, and she couldn’t handle being with him all the time. You’re not quite sure why she was attracted to your other friend, though, he’s obnoxious and sarcastic and pessimistic, even at the best of times. Either way, it was a huge loss for Eridan. He’d been in another relationship when you both were younger, but it was rather abusive and Vriska claimed she got bored with him, and you kind of have a feeling that she was just leading him on anyhow. He didn’t take that one quite as hard, but a breakup is a breakup either way. 

He felt worthless and detached for a while after school let out, he was going to head to college while you were stuck occupying the shitiest jobs you could find. You kept most of them for a while, and one of your favorites was the job when you worked at a café near the university that he was studying at, because he always looked different between walking in and walking out in the morning before his classes when he would stop in for a morning coffee or a bagel or something. He would arrive looking exhausted and run-down, but you two would talk for a good half hour before he would have to leave and he would be the same person you knew from school. You two used to talk an awful lot, and you got even closer on those early weekday mornings. You had to wake up at close to five thirty just so you could get yourself up in time to drive to the café by the school, but it was worth it to see your friend and actually get paid for it.

It was a month later when he asked you on a date.

Eridan took you to a showing of a new romantic comedy you had told him you were interested in seeing, and, even though those aren’t exactly his type of movie, he took you to it anyway. He bought you popcorn, sat awkwardly next to you in the theater and tried doing that cliché thing where you put your hand up on the armrest and hold the other person’s hand, and somehow it worked. And when he took you back to your house afterward, he was bold enough to kiss your cheek, not that you expected anything less from him. For your second date, you invited him over to watch a movie with him. You chose The Proposal, and he didn’t complain. He would have let you choose anything you wanted and wouldn’t have argued. You remember him getting restive during the part where Andrew announces the engagement, probably just because he’s not as interested as you are, but if you were to be completely honest, neither were you. You ended up talking during the rest of the movie, and before he left you shared your first kiss. It was pretty nice, if you remember correctly, because he can actually be gentle and considerate for something he holds close to his heart. You remember the things he would stop himself from doing, just because Feferi wouldn’t like it if he did. Some times were worse than others, but it didn’t stop her from leaving. He wanted to be closer to her, something she wasn’t completely on board with. So she pushed him aside and left. They haven’t talked at all, as far as you know. Anyway, back to that kiss. It was sweet and lingering, and before he left he took your hand in his own and brought it up to his dangerously gentle lips, kissing the back like you were somehow a prince, though you know that out of the both of you, he would definitely own the title. It was sweet, and romantic, and one of your favorite things you two did together because it felt like it could have come right out of one of your pathetic romance movies. And it was perfect.

Your third date was way too fancy for your personal liking, but Eridan wanted to have at least one dinner date as a couple so you agreed to let him take you out. You went to a pretty decent place; great food, nice atmosphere, all the things you would find in a stereotypical dinner date. He drove you home, but he looked so tired that you let him stay over at your apartment for the night. You ended up sharing a couple (or a lot, you hate to admit) of kisses, and you never thought that he would be such a good kisser; but you suppose that Vriska would have taught him. Or maybe he was just born that way, you have no idea. Anyway, you loved it, and eventually got so tired that you fell asleep together, leaning on each other, you wrapped in his arms, and him making you breakfast the next morning. 

That reminds you that you really should put your box of crackers away before you devour the entire thing, and after you do, you decide to go to bed. You’re pretty exhausted anyhow, so you pull the covers over your shoulders and turn off the light that’s perched on your nightstand, closing your eyes and hopefully getting some sleep tonight. 

You do, in fact, get some sleep tonight. However, as with every other night when you actually get your mind to rest, you don’t dream. You never do, and if it happens to be that once-in-a-blue-moon sort of night, then what comes is a nightmare. So you’re glad it worked out this way.

When you wake up the next morning, you rub your eye then roll over on the bed like you usually do in the morning to give your boyfriend a kiss, but you find it empty. And then you remember what happened last night. And you realize that you really fucked this up. Eridan is definitely really pissed off, and you thought the whole thing started as just an innocent argument. Either way, you bet he’s going to come back later, because he still loves you, you know he does. You just have to wait for him to get back. 

You get up and get dressed, putting on something random you find in your drawers, because frankly you don’t care about what you wear. You’re going to go to the grocery store to get some supplies to make Eridan a great dinner when he gets back, his favorite, if you can remember how to make it. You’ll try your best either way. It’s the thought that matters, right?

You head out to the store near that plaza with other shops dotting the borders of the mart you’re headed to, and on the way back you notice the hardware store on the corner. You remember that Eridan had wanted to repaint the living room in your now shared apartment, so you go in and get the shade that Eridan had been telling you about for so long, knowing the exact shade by memory after so much of him pointing it out when he saw it used in something. You head in with your bag of food products, getting some paint, plastic, and brushes for the room with the mindset that if you paint the room like he wanted that he’ll be super happy when he gets back. 

When you get home you put the food away, since it’s likely only nine in the morning, and start covering things with plastic and newspaper and move all of the furniture away from the walls so that you can paint them for Eridan. You get a little frustrated when you accidentally paint onto the trim because you went over the tape that you laid there to keep you from doing just that, but find some white paint and just cover it back up. To pass the time while the paint dries, you pick up your phone and decide to call Eridan, to apologize, to tell him you really want him to come back in a few hours, but you wouldn’t tell him why. You’d talk to him about how much you love him and how much you miss him and how much you really want to kiss him until both of your lips are numb and then fall asleep with him so you can kiss him when he wakes up, and you can both make slightly-burnt pancakes tomorrow morning and sit together on the couch and watch movies before he heads off to bed because he has a class on Monday that he needs to get up for. But when you dial the number that you know so well, it rings in your ear until it times out and brings you to his voicemail. You don’t want to leave a voicemail. You want to tell him all of that while he’s on the other end listening and smiling along to what you say. So you put the phone down and sit on your bed until the paint is dry. It takes a couple hours, and you do nothing but sit alone in your room, but when you’re positive that the paint is dry, you remove all of the plastic and paper and push the furniture back against the wall, and you take a moment to sit on the couch and admire your work. The color does look nice, you’ll give him that, and you did a pretty good job painting the walls, if you do say so yourself.

When you look to the table in the center of the room you see he’s left his key to the apartment on the table when he left suddenly last night.

You try calling Eridan again, but he doesn’t answer, so you get up to go make the dinner that you had planned. Maybe he’s already on the way over and doesn’t want to pick up his phone because he’s driving. It seems a logical enough answer to you, so you start making the food for him. You know his favorite food is salmon over rice, and that’s exactly what you plan on making for him. You set up the salmon with spices and seasonings and everything you can remember him putting on it, then pop it into the oven and start the rice when it’s almost done. When you pull everything out and carefully arrange it on two plates, you feel pretty satisfied with yourself. Now all you have to do sit and wait for him to get back so you can eat together and curl up on the couch together and fall asleep together. 

You call him three more times while you’re sitting there at the table, a smile somehow seemingly permanent on your face. He still doesn’t answer. You don’t realize there are tears falling down your face as you sit at the table expectantly, looking at the phone in your hand, the food you worked so hard on having been cold for at least two hours now, and suddenly you hear a knock on your door. You get up so fast that you hit your hip on the table and run to the door, so excited that he’s here that you spill out, “Wow, Eridan, you fucking idiot, leaving your key here,” and you don’t realize who’s standing there at first because your eyes are blurred with tears.

You don’t want to believe that standing there at the door to your apartment is a police officer.

And you don’t want to believe that he asks you, “Are you Karkat Vantas?” 

And you don’t want to believe that you’re nodding your head. But you are. You are nodding because that is and has always been and will always be your name.

And you don’t want to believe it when the officer says, “I’m sorry.”

And you don’t want to believe it when the officer says that Eridan was involved in a severe car crash that resulted in him being killed on the spot.

_And you don’t want to believe that the love of your life is gone._

And you don’t want to believe that you never got to say good bye.

And you definitely don’t want to believe that your last words to him were, “You’re a fucking idiot, Eridan, you know that? You’re an idiot and there’s no hope for you. I never want to see your face again.”

And mostly, you don’t want to believe that Eridan’s last words to you were, “Maybe you won’t, then.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'd appreciate pointing out any errors you may find!


End file.
